What role can “gently Socratic” philosophical inquiry play in the context of performing arts education?I consider myself fortunate to have had the honor of participating in Dr. Thomas Jackson’s PHIL 492: Philosophy with Children (p4c) course in the Spring of 2015, one of the last courses in my work towards my MFA in Dance. The concepts and techniques have continued to prove valuable over time, so I wanted to share as a resource for fellow educators, performing artists, and dancers.
This article was originally part of my Theory and Criticism work for my MFA in Dance in 2014, and critical pedagogy and artistic practice continues to be relevant to my teaching, coaching, and creative practice over a decade later.
My perspective has continued to expand with my maturation, experience, and ongoing education, so articulating my philosophy and approach is an ongoing challenge.
Since my graduate school years, I’ve made updates based on my qualitative in-studio encounters and from others who wish to honor the tradition of dance, including classical ballet, while also supporting the whole dancer and society in a contemporary context.
Dance and yoga classes have been hot and sweaty recently, it must be summer! It is a great season for strength and mobility gains, and to build a consistent stretching habit to support your athletic and artistic goals and feel good.
For frequent flyers and folks for whom it is important that we freely move, I’m offering yummy yoga poses, practices, and a playlist full of goodies for small spaces of time and elbowroom. As always, asana, shapes and flows are adaptive to varying energy levels and needs, physical capacity and limits from within or without, which you may practice anytime from anywhere.
2024
quantum leaps in store
into creativity
joy + love galore!
That’s the poem I shared when I declared my Word of the Year and practices to make it so.
It was indeed a Leap Year, and that extra day in February, plus a powerful intention-setting and planning process and aligned daily habits created quantum leaps in many areas of my and my clients and students’ lives.
Here I’m reviewing my goals and intentions, highlights and lowlights, joys, lessons, and challenges of 2024, in order to move powerfully into 2025.
Hard times come to us all, so how can we bounce back and recover? Here are the tools that work for me when I need to cope with difficult developments and which I share with clients and students to support their commitment to what’s important in their lives despite setbacks.
Leaning on them now and curious to hear what you find works best for you!
A delightful conversation with fellow dance educator and UNCSA alumnus as well as super-talented and wonderful guy, Matthew Donnell! We talk about the highs and lows of being a multi-passionate jack-of-all-trades, his highlights as a professional ballet dancer, how to fall down and get back up again, the importance of révérence, character dance, and technique variety in ballet training, developing character in dancers and human beings, serving our communities, helping dancers find their voice, and assert that all people are valuable!
Part 1 of my mini-series on Dancing Body Acceptance! I had the great pleasure, during my personal “Body-Positive October” celebration research, to talk with Dietician Fumi Sumehara, who is based in Australia. Fumi took time out of her busy day at the DDD Clinic to talk with me about diet culture in ballet and society and ways to promote nourishment and a healthy relationship with eating and body image as dancers, teachers, companies and schools, and others.
Here’s a healthy half-dozen ballet connecting steps to practice as you develop your dancing over the years, so many fun ways to get from one place to another!
“Do not fear mistakes–there are none.” – Miles Davis
The research-based book on learning, Make it Stick, blew my mind a bit during my teacher credential program, especially finding out that the difficulty of recalling new information correctly correlates to the depth of the learning. That means the more I struggle to remember German words, as long as I try hard, keep practicing, and get corrections when I can, the more permanent and retrievable that information will be in the future.
Struggle and failure are inherent to learning, creativity, and dancing, so we would do well to learn to approach them with compassion.
